Deposition
by belleways
Summary: The aftermath of the broken curse leaves Regina bereft of everything. She doesn't have a reason to live until Prince Charming gives her one. TW self-abuse, implied rape, and overall angsty angsty angst.


Regina Mills never wanted to be a tragedy.

But at her highest point of vulnerability she _is_ a tragedy, and it sickens her with a stifling fever that takes root in the pit of her belly and blooms into her lungs so hotly that she cannot _breathe_, she cannot _think_, she cannot _be_ anything but this profligate husk of a woman who never really existed anyway.

As she stands at the top of the stairwell in her elegant mansion she plays all too well the part of the deposed queen, abandoned and alone while surrounded by the world she can no longer inhabit, the world that will soon be ripped from her defeated clutches and burned no doubt by the wronged and the vengeful. It is as if she is encapsulated by transparent glass, seeing and hearing and knowing every familiar thing around her but no longer being able to taste it, to touch it, to _take_ it like she has always been taught.

It is at this point in the day that she has reached a crossroads, one with such prodigious importance that if she dare take the wrong path she will run the risk of becoming known as a bigger tragedy than she already is, and that sits with her distastefully. On the one hand Regina has lived long enough to discard what others say or think about her, but on the other hand Regina is vain, and if she _is_ to go down in flames it will not be as a victim.

She summons the energy to take on the steps one at a time, each movement a private battle; yet when she reaches the last step she feels anything but victory.

Regina wonders what she is expected to do now – what she _can_ do now.

True, the magic coursing through her veins is a fleetingly sweet relief, but it is empty without Henry (who she bitterly assumes is on his way back to the Charmings' glorious loft estate). Without her son she cannot entertain the thought of happiness, and as it is every breath she takes feels like concession to the inevitable, feels like defeat and acceptance that her son is gone and she will never be able to hold him again. At least not like before.

She assumes she will hear of a truce soon. However angry or devastated Snow White may be, there is one thing of which she is never capable, and that is exacting any form of violent retribution. Though Regina has pillaged and destroyed and singlehandedly ruined every happiness Snow has ever wanted, the princess will never hurt her stepmother, never raise a hand against her. And it maddens Regina – maddens her to the point where she will goad Snow White into eternity just to see her break, just to be the cause of the cracks in her perfectly pacifist façade.

Perhaps that is all Regina has ever wanted; to die by Snow White's hand. It would be fitting, after all. Indeed, no symmetry would ever be more accurate, more sickeningly harmonious. She could join Daniel in a parallel death and the balance would be restored to this wretched life she has survived.

These thoughts suspended darkly over her head, the woman who was once queen numbly enters her kitchen with the intention of doing something menial to distract herself. Her eyes skim over the dirty dishes piled in the sink, the muddy shoeprints from Henry's sneakers blemishing her overly polished linoleum floor, and suddenly she is winded and sinking to the ground. Her back slumps against the cabinets and she cannot care about the wrinkles this will give her suit – she cannot care about anything except the overbearing realization that if she cleans these shoeprints they will never appear on her floor again, in this room or any other. This is the final residue of Henry Mills, this is the last element of him that will ever be present in her home again (she can hardly count his bedroom, which is more a museum-worthy relic than anything of life).

She feels the throb of misery in her heart cloying to get out, to squeeze past her eyelids and tumble down her cheeks, but weeping is for children and emotion is defeat, and Regina will not be defeated.

So she merely dips her body to the floor and lies there beside Henry's footprints, for longer than she cares to admit.

_Love is weakness, Regina_, her mother's words echo menacingly in her head.

And yet in this moment, she closes her eyes and remains motionless on her dirty kitchen floor and allows herself be weak.

It goes on like this for days; Regina wandering aimlessly about her house like a waif, uncertain of how to exist now that her world has disintegrated beneath her feet. Magic flickers timidly at her fingertips but refuses to bend to her command – it seems she has lost her spark, as it were, along with her son. Regina learned that all magic, dark or otherwise, refuses to cater to the whims of an unsure master, and she has been nothing but unsure since the curse was broken.

And she hates herself for it.

She hates that she cannot function normally in what should be her own personal sanctuary, hates that she cannot take one step out of her bedroom without feeling the smothering absence of what had been, up until three days ago, her sole livelihood.

Her days are static in their monotony. Awaken from an insufficient slumber, shower and take care of basic grooming needs, amble into the kitchen and search for food, decide to simply go hungry, hole up in the study for several hours pouring over various tomes imported from another lifetime, scrounge up something basic for dinner, and retire early to a fitful night full of tossing and turning.

Every day is a new layer of hell, every night a bad dream she can't escape.

Today she is sitting in the living room going through Henry's backpack from last year, sorting through the things she should keep and the things she should trash. Of course she knows she isn't going to get rid of anything, but she tells herself she's doing something useful so as to justify this pathetic sentimentality. She wants to hold his essence in her hands, run her fingers over his penciled thoughts, connect to him for just a moment.

She finds a drawing shoved lazily into the crease of a notebook and extracts it slowly, smoothing its crinkled edges over her lap before hazarding a glance.

A crude stick figure scene unfurls over the blue-lined page; a knight labeled "Prince Charming" points a sword at a small witchy looking woman labeled "The Evil Queen." Beneath each drawing is a parenthetical sub-label, one being "coma guy" and one being "mom." The latter has been crossed out almost past recognition, but she sees it still.

Regina's shoulders sag as she recalls a time when Henry didn't think she was the Evil Queen – when there was at least a shadow of doubt inside his mind that she could be such a harbinger of turmoil and misery. Truth be told, she's lived this ruse long enough to catch herself actually believing in it; believing she's just a mayor of a small town with a doting son and a devoted lover on the side, believing she hasn't done despicable things in the past that would make anyone with good conscience blanche.

Heart suddenly charged, Regina rises without hesitation and shuffles into the kitchen. She digs a magnet out from a drawer and fixes the drawing on the center of her refrigerator, as if it is a tribute to her wretched isolation or a forgotten idyll of the past now put on display.

She takes a step back and wonders how the kitchen was ever complete without it.

It happens the next day when she's sitting in her office staring at the telephone as if it will ring.

It's a tentative knock at first, suggesting the knocker is either against approaching her home or afraid to. She almost thinks it's a phantom of her imagination until she hears it again, this time slower, heavier, more deliberate.

Regina floats numbly to the door and pulls it back, half expecting to meet with her reckoning in the form of a belated town mob. But instead she sees the face of Prince Charming, a little less aloof and oblivious as his Storybrooke counterpart. His eyes are too knowing and reproachful to belong to David Nolan, which is why she is loath to invite him in. Still, she musters a flat smirk and inclines her head as she gestures for him to come inside.

"Why, I was starting to think the royal family had forgotten about me," she drawls softly, unused to the sound of her own voice. "I have to say, I'm disappointed. I thought you and your wife would have led the town to raid my house with pitchforks by now. It seems you have lost your edge." Even shriveled and cowed before him, she lashes out like a wounded animal. Some things will never change.

She's delighted to see the anger working through him, the stretched sinews of his jaw flexing with the bitter retorts he's forced to bite back – no doubt by decree of his lovely peacemaking wife.

"Regina," is his tight reply, all stiff formalities and threatening undertones. "You are lucky to be given the benefit of my wife's patience. We would like to extend a truce. Will you cooperate?"

A smile reaches her lips but not her eyes. "Come now, Charming, when have I ever been _un_cooperative?" She's antagonizing him and it's what he expected, she can see it in his eyes.

He does his best to ignore her and strides confidently into her living room, not bothering to remove his shoes before trampling all over her pristine white carpets. She flinches but can't will herself to _really_ care.

It's incredible, how this man walks into her home and struts about it as if it is his – how he traipses into her living room and perches atop her sofa like it is a conquered throne. She can do nothing but trail obediently after him and sink into the chair opposite this self-proclaimed king, eyes thick with poorly concealed resentment. He is taunting her with his mere presence, staining her home with his petty self-adulation. He reeks of pride with every breath that he takes, and when he looks at her it is a look of stinking condescension.

"Until we find a way to get back home, you are to remain in your mansion unless otherwise notified. We will have foodstuffs and other necessities delivered to you. You are not permitted to communicate with anyone aside from myself. Furthermore, to ensure you do not enlist the help of any sympathizers there will be guards stationed outside your house at all times. Are we clear?"

"A 'truce' implies that there are concessions on both sides. If I am to concede to all you have proscribed for me, what do I get in return?"

"Your life," he says, simply, not even deigning to elaborate.

She sighs and swings her head from side to side, a chuckle pushing past her lips.

James is unhappy to see her amused and leans forward warningly. "You find this funny?"

"There is nothing in this world that I value _less_ than my life," she admits in a moment of unprecedented honesty. "When will you people ever understand that?"

He doesn't trust it at first – he thinks it's a sick ploy to get his sympathy, like that night not so long ago – but when he looks into her soulful brown eyes he sees something there that convinces him otherwise, and he is silent. Silent, but still unforgiving.

"After all you have done to us," he begins, coldly, "it is all we can offer."

And for once in her life she doesn't blame him.

"So what," she quips with a raise of her brow, "where do I sign?"

James gives her another haughty look and shakes his head, and suddenly Regina is back at Leopold's court feeling disparaged and minimized to the point of frustrated obscurity. She clenches her jaw and rises from her seat, and he follows suit.

"I'm afraid you really don't have any choice but to submit."

"There is always a choice, Charming," she corrects, with a cluck of her tongue. "But you are fortunate that I am not going to make the wrong one."

"So you admit, freely, that fighting back would be wrong. You admit that we are right." She can see the cogs turning in his head; she can feel him over thinking her words as he has been conditioned to do. "That isn't like you, Regina. You and I both know that. What are you planning?"

She pauses for a moment and James swears he can see the queen in her eyes struggling to emerge.

"It is never the right choice to _fight_ when you have nothing worth fighting _for_," Regina explains. "Everyone knows that."

James's eyes trail after her as she wanders toward the kitchen, lingering over the change in her gait. She is limpid and emotionless – a mere shell of the woman who thwarted his happiness so long ago. He noticed the change earlier, beginning with the end of Mary Margaret's trial, but now it is even more frightfully pronounced; now she is even gaunter and ghastlier than he thought possible. If he didn't know any better he would say she is more of a corpse than a human being, but now is not the time for pity. With Regina, he doubts there will _ever_ be a time for pity.

That's what he thinks, anyway, until he enters the kitchen and sees the drawing hanging on the refrigerator.

Regina doesn't notice that he's looking at it because she's scrubbing the clean dishes for the fortieth time just to busy her hands. But James _does_ see it, and he _does_ feel something for her, just then.

It is a soft etching of a prince (him) slaying an evil witch (her); an etching made with hands too young for such imagined violence, with eyes too innocent to conceive of a mother's death. James wonders briefly why Regina has this depressing thing stuck to her fridge, but then he answers his own wonderment almost immediately – how much of Henry does she have left? If he'd had a chance to keep something of Emma's (no matter how macabre it may have been) before she'd been taken away from him, he would have.

It is then that James begins, for the first time, to really _see_ Regina as more than what she seems. He doesn't like it, but he's starting to understand why Snow is so hesitant to hurt her. It seems the queen is fairly skilled at hurting herself.

When she turns around he has it in his hands.

"Don't touch that," she snaps, reflexively snatching it from his hand.

But he doesn't relinquish his grip fast enough and it tears right down the middle.

It's silent for a moment as James begins to stutter an apology and Regina boils beneath her skin, until finally she erupts – and even Prince Charming, who has fought dragons, is unprepared to withstand its blast.

"_Get out of here_," she growls, fingers crumpling around the torn page.

"Look, I didn't – "

"_Get out of my house_!"

Her eyes are swollen red as unshed tears throb beneath her skin, and her lips quiver with a thousand terrible words she wishes she could say. But her heart is splitting in two and she's not equipped to dole out any tongue-lashings, so she just stands there and seethes in electrifying silence as James retreats to the door. His business is done here and he has no more reason to stay, especially after what he's just incited.

"I'm sorry," comes his lame apology, just before he shuts the door behind him. "I'll be back in a week."

When she knows she is alone Regina crumbles to the floor and lets the darkness engulf her.

"_You are my wife, Regina," Leopold says, and it is cold and final. "That is not just a title. It is a reality, requiring certain duties to be fulfilled along with it. You didn't just expect to be a nanny to my daughter, did you?" _

_He's had too much to drink at the wedding feast and has cornered Regina on the bed, lecturing her on what she must do to please him. She's heard it all before but it hasn't stopped terrifying her; in this moment she appears before him not as a queen or a woman but as a scared little girl. It infuriates her._

"_Take off your dress," he orders, circling the bed like a hawk. He begins to disrobe himself, and Regina shuts her eyes to keep from trembling._

_Her fingers are shaking as she unlaces the front of her nightgown, and before she knows it her king has gotten impatient and her dress is on the floor, ripped in half. She is bare before him, clinging to herself in a desperate attempt to hide her body. But Leopold is climbing over her and flattening her against the mattress, drinking in the sight of her naked flesh like an engorged leech. Regina's body stiffens, muscles no more pliable than steel. Though this is not the first time he has taken her, her defenses remain in place. Her hackles rise like a dog's whenever he comes into view, and she supposes this is fitting since her mother says she is no more than the king's most prized bitch. _

_She's starting to believe she sickens Leopold. He doesn't bother pressing their lips together, he never deigns to make her comfortable during their lovemaking, he flips her over on her stomach and takes her from the back like she is his whore rather than his wife. But then, she imagines even whores are treated better than this. _

_In vain she summons Daniel's image behind her eyelids; but Leopold is so rough and callous that no matter how desperately she tries, she cannot make herself pretend that it is her stable boy above her and not her king. Now she feels like thinking of Daniel at a time like this has dirtied him somehow, dishonored his memory in some twisted and pathetic way. Shame beats over her face and though she doesn't think it's possible she feels even worse. _

_Pain sears through her sex as Leopold pierces through her softest tissues, with little regard to the tears streaming down her face or the muffled moans of agony bubbling from her lips. _

_It has been but minutes since he rolled off her and yet Regina already feels the blood, hot and thick, pooling between her legs. This will no doubt fuel even more palace gossip; Regina's only wish is that it reaches Snow White's tender ears and awakens her to the horrors of her step-mother's new life. Horrors that could have been avoided._

"_I will call your lady's maid to clean this up," Leopold announces, shrugging into his robes before sweeping out of the room. _

_Regina remains motionless on the bed, barely acknowledging the sound of the creaking door and timid footsteps pattering across the ground. The world around her is clouded and hazy as she's rolled over and a warm rag is pressed to her groin, and she almost feels as if she's floating. The pain pulses dully through her body but Regina ignores it. She ignores everything. She doesn't have the strength to think._

_When the bed things are switched out and she is buried under the covers in her proverbial tomb, Regina stares at the canopy above her and sinks into despair. There is no moon tonight but the starlight leaks through the window, twinkling over the stonework in Regina's room like a breathing tapestry. A candle burns on her nightstand but it doesn't reach her eyes; everything she sees is black, everything she feels is black._

"_Regina?"_

_It's hardly above a whisper but Regina's senses are attuned to silence and she hears it, as much as she doesn't want to. _

"_Can I come in?"_

_It isn't long before the tiny footsteps echo off the walls and the bed dips to make way for the little sylph's body, until finally she is pressed flush against Regina's side and nuzzles against her shoulder._

"_I had a bad dream," Snow confesses, voice struggling against tears. "I don't like the dark."_

_Regina's mouth is clamped shut as if by a muzzle; she says nothing, feels nothing. She is limp and Snow notices it but does not know how to cure it. The change in Regina has not gone unnoticed by Snow White, who attributes it to Daniel's desertion. But if he was so quick to abandon her, Snow questions, did he even love her to begin with? The girl does not know him but she hates him – hates him for being a heartless coward, hates him for breaking her stepmother's spirit. But now Regina has her father's love; she has her love. Why isn't it enough? It seems nothing is enough. When Regina hurts, Snow hurts. But the little princess is helpless to tear down the barrier between she and her stepmother. It is as if she is standing at the foot of a giant stone wall and, try as she might, she cannot scale it; yet for some reason, even though she knows she will fail, she tirelessly tries to climb it anyway. This is the stuff of her nightmares – this is what she fears most. Never being able to fix the woman she loves most. Climbing to the top of that wall and always, always, tumbling off._

"_Do you ever have bad dreams?" she asks softly, breath warm on Regina's neck._

"_I am living one," she wants to say. "I am living one and it is all your fault." But she remains mute, unable to answer the girl's question. _

_Regina doesn't even know she's weeping until Snow's hovering over her face and brushing away her tears._

"_Don't cry, Regina," Snow soothes with a sad smile. "It's okay. Everyone has nightmares. I'm with you now, don't be scared." _

_But Regina doesn't sleep at all that night._

And sometimes Regina thinks she hasn't truly slept _since_ then.

She doesn't know what inspired her to recall the details of that night; it's a memory she usually keeps hidden, tucked away in that untouchable corner of her burnt and blackened heart. But her mind has been straying into the danger zone lately, sifting through old memories as if to flog her with past hurts and past failures, barely congealed even after all this time. Twenty-eight years, it's been, and her wounds still bleed like they were inflicted yesterday.

She is weak. She is so _weak_.

Regina looks at herself in the mirror and her stomach curdles.

And before she knows it blood is trickling down her arm and shards of glass are stuck between her fingers.

The next time Charming decides to grace her with his presence he brings a conciliatory gift.

"Here," he says, offering her a folded slip of paper.

Her bony fingers take the proffered thing like it is some sacrificial offering, and before she opens it she already knows what it is.

"I had him draw you another one," James says, and the way he looks at her is reminiscent of a puppy looking to its master for approval.

Approval that she has been taught not to give.

"It isn't the same," she says, tersely.

"Well – " he stumbles, quick to explain, to rationalize, "I thought the other one was kind of morbid so I asked him to draw a nicer one."

Regina levels her eyes with James's as he babbles, and before he has any more time to spew more lies she accuses, with calculated certainty, "Henry didn't draw this. You did."

He looks like he's about to argue with her, defend himself somehow, but when he sees the knowledge in her eyes he does nothing but sheepishly drop his gaze and let out a defeated sigh.

The drawing is crude enough to be completed by a child, but Regina knows the slopes and curves of Henry's script too well to be tricked that easily. Not to mention, it's different from all of Henry's other sketches. The work has been titled "Friends," and the queen is portrayed smiling, with the prince's arm around her shoulder.

Henry couldn't have done this because he hasn't forgiven her. She doesn't know for sure, and she hasn't seen him in weeks, but something inside of her _senses_ it, _knows_ it has to be raw for him still. She puts herself in his shoes and knows she wouldn't forgive herself either; at least not yet.

"Well," she says, after an uncomfortable silence. "Do you have my groceries, too, or did you only come to make a fool of yourself?"

James's mouth presses into a thin line and he makes a gesture with his hand, prompting two dwarves to emerge from the bushes and drop a few measly grocery bags at her feet. "You know, I don't have to do this for you, Regina. I owe you nothing."

A dry smile parts Regina's lips and she shakes her head. "Of course you have to do this for me," she taunts, quirking a brow. "Because no matter what I do, or who I hurt, or what I destroy, your precious little Snow White will _always_ forgive me." She leans forward daringly, inches from his face. "Just – like – _that_." Regina accentuates her point with a snap of her fingers and James flinches. She feels his heart accelerate, pumping a surplus of blood to his head and inviting a growl from somewhere deep within his throat. She knows he doesn't understand why Snow always gives her the benefit of the doubt. She knows it maddens him. She knows if it had been up to him she'd be swinging by a rope from her apple tree right now.

She knows just how to push his buttons. He's as easy to read as ever. And she pushes them with some kind of sadistic pleasure.

"I'm trying to be the good guy, here," he finally manages to say, despite the rage pulsating beneath his skin. "No matter what I do you always pick a fight. Why is that, Regina? Why can't you just grow up?"

The words ricochet off her with well-practiced apathy, but still, her smile droops. "Because the only thing you do is _hate_ me and _pity _me in equal measure," she spits, the venom in her words reaching her eyes. "You are _just_ like her."

Regina stoops to collect her groceries and kicks the door behind her, leaving James standing wordless and infuriated on the other side.

At first, he doesn't make to pursue her or deny her claims because he realizes they are true.

Even now, abandoned and seething on her doorstep, Prince James can't decide whether he hates her or pities her more.

Perhaps it is this realization that compels him to venture into her house, following her into the kitchen where he stumbles in upon a scene he is sure he was never meant to witness. Or perhaps there was something, intrinsically, tugging on him, telling him to go after her because she is far from okay. He hates her and pities her in equal measure, she is right, but he'll be damned if he'll let her destroy herself on his watch. He trusts his wife when she says Regina is more than she seems.

And when he sees her bowed over her kitchen counter, vaguely maudlin and quite near the point of emaciation, he is aware of this more than ever.

"Regina," he starts, softly, "Please believe me when I say I know that Henry misses you."

Her only response is a disbelieving scoff.

"He is confused right now," James persists, "But he won't be confused forever."

It's silent for a moment as Regina mulls over what he's said, drawing her own conclusions to the point where she strays off topic deliberately.

"It's fitting, isn't it? I take your child, and now you take mine."

She's hunched over the counter, derelict and shriveled, a sinner prostrate at an unforgiving altar.

James let out a haggard sigh and shoves his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, something like that."

"How did we get like this, James?" she asks, desperately, using his name perhaps for the first time. "Our lives were supposed to be fairytales, not tragedies."

"I'm a firm believer that we are the authors of our own stories," James ventures, inching toward her gingerly as if approaching a wounded animal. "And there's still time to revise yours."

Regina is too jaded to believe him. She lets out a bark of a laugh and flexes her fingers over the marble counter, eyes darting around in search of a mindless occupation.

"You know _nothing_ about me," she flares, suddenly rounding on him. "And you know _nothing_ about pain."

"So tell me, Regina," he challenges. "Tell me who you are, because God knows my wife won't and I think I have a right to know considering I'm the one keeping you alive."

For barely a second he thinks he sees her consider it – a compulsion to tell him that shines through her eyes, a desire to share her story to anyone who will listen, quivering unspoken on her lips – but it's over before it begins. The walls resurrect instantly and nearly blacken her eyes.

"You don't know what you're asking for."

It's resolute and final, or at least it's meant to be. But James doesn't desist.

"I will share with you _my_ story, in return," he proposes, ignoring her sneer.

"What makes you think I have any interest in you whatsoever?"

"I know you don't," he admits, shrugging. "But it's a fair deal. A story for a story. And maybe we'll come out of it understanding one another a little more." James can practically taste the aura of hesitation clinging to her worn form, so he adds, "Come on, Regina. What do you have to lose?"

He knows he shouldn't have said it as soon as it tumbles out of him, but he can't take it back – he can't breathe it in and swallow it down and pretend it never happened, as much as he wants to. It's too late and the agony is visible over every inch of her body.

After a silence she whispers, "Nothing. I have nothing to lose."

James needs no further directive to remain mum on the issue, taking his cues from her slumped shoulders and glassy eyes. He's crossed a line without even meaning to, and now all hope of getting his wife's plan underway has been dashed. At least for the time being. Befriend her, Snow said. Get to know her, Snow said. Find the goodness in her and bring it to light, for the good of the realm. But James is looking at the former queen right now and he doesn't know if he can do it. Not because he hates her, not because he pities her, but because he wonders if there is anything _left_ inside her heart at all, anything salvageable beneath the thick network of scars. How can Snow White still believe there is goodness in this woman when he sees nothing in her but tragedy? She is a fragment of her yesteryear and a weak fragment at that. There is nothing inside her but rage and gloom; despondency beyond repair. Snow is wrong to believe James can earn her trust. Snow is wrong to have sent him on this foolish errand at all. He doesn't _want_ to feel anything for Regina, dammit! He doesn't _want_ to be analyzing the buried emotions of a woman who tried to destroy him. He _wants_ to be home with his wife and daughter and grandson and he wants to put all thoughts of Regina aside, forever.

But she is his responsibility now and he cannot shirk her.

"Let's put the bickering to rest and just talk for a while, alright?" James steps closer to her and offers his hand. "I'm tired of fighting, and I know, deep down, you are too."

The first thing that comes to Regina's mind when she takes James's hand is that this man _remembers_ everything. He knows she plotted to ruin his happy ending, he knows she's been nothing but cruel to his dear wife, he knows she stuck him in a coma, gave him a fake wife, and then tried to seduce him after failing to incarcerate his real beloved, he knows she took away his daughter and his life – and yet here he stands, holding out his palm in a gesture of peace. Just like that. Oh, Regina is not idiot. She sees the conflict in his eyes. She knows Snow White well enough to attribute this ceasefire to her master plot. But even for all the love in his heart, she wonders, does he _have_ to go through with it? Snow forgives everyone. She'd forgive her true love for lopping off her nemesis's head.

And yet here he stands. And he's genuine about it, damn him, he's actually being honest in wanting to learn who she is.

He's genuine about his interest in her pain like her husband never was.

Just like that.

She's staring at him with wide vulnerable eyes and almost doesn't notice when his thumb brushes over her knuckles, riding the jagged ridges left there by the incident with the mirror. She stares at him bravely and does not drop her hand from his, refusing to acknowledge that she should be ashamed of herself for this residue of a moment's weakness. Regina is never ashamed of anything she does.

James didn't notice it until now, the bright red gashes crisscrossing over the knuckles of her right hand. But now that he's seen them they are _all_ he can see, for he knows in that instant that they are too conspicuously placed to have been the result of an accident. Dismay, confusion, and helplessness plummet to the pit of his stomach as he levels his gaze to hers as sees the confidence there – knows she is almost sickly satisfied with the damage she has done. And yet he expects that from her. What he _doesn't_ expect is what happens next.

She crumbles. She honest to goodness crumbles right there in front of him and he has no fucking clue what to do.

It starts with her eyes. Those big brown orbs that are quick and lethal as vipers, with dark and sinister plans always unfurling behind them. Those eyes, something twists just around the pupil. Something breaks. Something cracks, from her eye right to her nose, from her nose right to her lips. The fissure causes her to inhale sharply, to stay her tongue, to attempt to repair whatever it is inside of her that just ruptured. But she can't. The tears are slipping through the cracks rapidly, like a dam breaking free of its constraints, and once the cascade begins it seems she is powerless to stop it. Her eyebrows come together, her mouth muffles moans, her knees buckle rapidly, her chest heaves against sobs, and within seconds she's breaking.

She's crumbling.

James does his best to ignore the nausea roiling in his stomach and instinctively drops to the ground with her, eyes wide and terrified and completely unsure of how to process this unthinkable scenario.

He doesn't really want to _touch_ her, there's something strange and foreign and reprehensible about that, but he assumes he has no choice so he easily gathers her in his arms and lifts her from the floor, not even slightly awed by her light weight. She's wasted away over these past few weeks, he's noticed; it's a wonder she has any meat left on her bones at _all_.

Her wails are so gut wrenching he can hardly hear himself think for panic, so the only decision he's able to make is to take her to her bedroom, where she can lie down and cry it out. When he was a child he'd always retire to his bed to have a good cry if he needed one and there's nothing to say the same won't work for Regina.

By the time he lays her down on the thick comforter she's smearing black ooze that was once her mascara all over her arms in an effort to clear it from her face, so James quickly fetches a roll of toilet paper from her bathroom and dabs at the remaining goo beneath her eyes only to be rewarded with a fresh bout of tears. He's helpless and stupefied and it seems his efforts to console her only make things worse. What can he do but wait it out?

He stretches himself out on her bed, forming a line with his body parallel to hers. James attempts to ignore the sweetly pungent odor of shampoo on her pillow – an odor that is so distinctly her, so vibrantly _Regina_, that inhaling it feels inappropriate. Yet there's something so enchanting that he can't quite break away, he can't quite disentangle his senses from its alluring hold. He surrenders to the scent and fixes his eyes on its source, disintegrated and shapeless beside him, and scoots closer, shattering the parallel, breaking the laws of fate and mathematics and bringing her cold and weary body flush against his. She flinches at the contact and even in this state her base instinct is to resist, but he will not relent – his arm is over her chest and his grip is too strong to allow her the freedom of wriggling away.

At length she stops crying, but they remain in silence; motionless bodies fitting together awkwardly like mismatched puzzle pieces. Her breaths are shallow and echo emptily through her lungs, intermingling with the more regular and calm exhales of her companion. Regina's too humiliated to venture a word and James has to respect that.

He doesn't know how long they've been lying there without speaking, and he can't tell if it feels like an eternity or a moment. The light dripping through the blinds of her window have faded from gold, to black, to white – and soon he sees that Regina has drifted into what he believes is a much-needed sleep. While he doesn't want to risk waking her, he can't exactly spend the night either. He doesn't really have a choice.

Carefully he manages to extract himself from the bed without stirring her, holding his breath and barely moving a muscle in the process. For some reason he feels wrong letting himself out – as if he's sneaking away after a one night stand. Which this isn't, obviously, but the guilt is the same. After what happened, he can't just _leave_. But he won't wake her up and he doesn't have anything to write on, or with, so –

But _Regina_ does.

James tiptoes out of the room with renewed purpose and sneaks downstairs into her study, where he is relieved to see a printer fully stocked with a ream of crisp white paper. He grabs a sheet from the cradle and a pen from one of her drawers and scribbles two sentences rapidly, scrawling in a flurried frenzy. When he's through he folds it in half and creeps back to her bedroom, leaving the folded note on the pillow beside her.

Before he exits once more, James feels something like conscience slithering around his ankles and anchoring him to the spot.

He tilts his head to the side and regards the sleeping queen, for the first time, with a little more pity than hate.

Then he slips out the door and is gone.

_Last night you showed me who you are. Tomorrow night I'll do the same._

Regina is downstairs in the kitchen, tearing through the groceries for something appropriate to fix for dinner.

_Damn_ him! Damn him to hell!

She pulls a pot roughly from a cabinet and slams it onto the gas stove, metal against metal zinging a high-pitched tune through the room.

She has to _do_ something.

Regina hasn't stopped moving since she awoke this morning, a sore and exhausted bag of bones engulfed by an all but withering mortification. The more the memories of the night prior leak into her brain the more frenzied movement and chores she throws herself into, a whirlwind of forced domesticity. The less she moves the more she thinks and she absolutely _cannot_ think – not now, not ever.

Twenty minutes of raiding her pantries and the only solid thing Regina has come up with is the fact that the man has particularly substandard taste in groceries. Potato chips, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, pop-tarts… it's almost as if he let _Henry_ shop for her, without any rules to boot! Frustrated, Regina slams her hand on the marble counter with a resounding smack. How is she expected to cook dinner when all she has to offer is junk food and kid snacks? Sometimes she forgets how childish James is – rather, how childish _David_ was, and how the remnant of that Storybrooke incarnation bleeds through to James's true self. Whatever that is anymore.

Regina stares, defeated, at the array of foodstuffs arranged on her counter, and many minutes pass before she finally resigns herself to the task of boiling a pot of water for the macaroni and cheese.

The water's on the stove and she needs to give it ten minutes before it'll boil, so Regina collects napkins and silverware for place settings. After everything is arranged perfectly in the dining room, she returns to the kitchen and stands in front of the stove.

They caution, in this world, never to watch water boil.

This is her private rebellion.

Within time, though, the water does begin to bubble and simmer. Taking that as her cue, Regina dumps in the stiff yellow noodles and swirls them around a turn or two with a plastic spoon.

She will _not_ let herself remember that this is Henry's favorite.

She will _not_ permit herself to accept the dizzy rush of nostalgia slackening every muscle in her body.

Regina locks her knees in place and stirs – stirs compulsively, stirs gently, stirs mechanically; stirs, just _stirs_. The bustling world behind her eyes is shut down, swallowed by suffocating blackness until no thought, no memory, no feeling, no matter how bright, can shine through. After last night, Regina decides, there will be no more useless emotion in this household so long as she is in charge of it.

When the macaroni and cheese is completed she covers it and places it in the oven to keep it warm while she readies herself for her guest. She's thought long and hard about what she ought to wear, wanting to convey a façade of strength and stability to James after what he witnessed last night. A suit, then, is the most obvious choice, and she has already mentally selected the perfect one: her favorite, naturally. Crisp, simple, emotionless, black. Exactly how she feels.

She wends her way up to her closet and dresses herself in said suit, freshly pressed and cleaned this morning, relishing its secure familiarity on her skin. She chooses a white blouse to wear beneath, for nothing more than a basic contrast. Basic. Plain. That's what she desires. In that vein, she peers at her reflection in the mirror and applies an appropriate amount of make-up; a sheer, natural look, coupled with her characteristic dark red lipstick. As for her hair, she is undecided. It's grown longer these past few weeks and she feels uncomfortable leaving it down, even though she had long hair for the majority of her former life. It is different now. Then it was soft, thick, heavy. But now it is thinner, coarser, limper. It is as if she is decomposing in this catacomb of a home, slowly deteriorating with every passing minute like she is being eaten alive by earth and worms and death. Eyes fix on eyes that look back at her from the sunken vantage of an ashen woman with harsh, skeletal architecture and she realizes, she is not a woman and she is certainly not a queen. She is a wraith, at best; a hateful specter that gorges itself on long lost regrets and stale hatred.

Numbly, Regina coils her hair into a tight, round bun at the back of her head and decides she is ready. She slides into a pair of black heels and slowly descends to the kitchen once more, where she removes the pot from the oven and sprinkles the cheesy pasta with a few herbs – it's the least she can do, after all.

Everything is perfectly arranged according to proper decorum and Regina is mildly pleased with herself. She takes a seat at the table and waits, drumming her fingers lightly on its mahogany surface.

She hates waiting because waiting allows her the luxury of contemplation.

God, but she doesn't want James to be here. At the mere thought of facing him her heart sinks to her feet and she can't reclaim it. If she had any pride left, she would never let him step foot in her house again. But, naturally, that goes against the terms of their little bargain, and she was told not to be ornery. For once she follows their rules. Perhaps she has finally relented. Perhaps the dreadful Evil Queen has finally lost her cause, once and for all, as well as the will to fight along with it. For all intents and purposes she has given up, hasn't she? She has surrendered.

Snow White won a second time and it has cost Regina everything.

And here's Snow's true love, ringing the doorbell, his presence a persistent reminder of all Regina has lost, all she still has yet to lose. She briefly considers leaving him standing there at her doorstep but she's made the macaroni and cheese already and she can't eat it all herself.

She pulls back the door and he smiles at her, a smile that says, "I promise I won't bring up what happened last night, so let's just have a civil dinner," a promise that sneers and condescends and makes something evil and hateful snake its way around Regina's stomach. She looks at him with lusterless eyes and allows him entry, ignoring the guilt on his face because she doesn't want to be reminded of its source for the umpteenth time today, not really, not after she's spent the better half of the day baking him macaroni and cheese and putting on a power suit.

James walks into her home and immediately feels an aura of trepidation and opacity sink around him, settling like a thick dust. He wades through it only to see Regina on the other side, a concrete barricade surrounding her with such high and impenetrable walls that he cannot hope to climb. She is terrified, this much he can tell. After last night she opened up to him past her level of comfort and now she is taking ten steps backward, pushing him out completely and insulating herself from further penetration. He's never dealt with this kind of person before, much less in the form of a woman. Everything he's ever had in life has come to him easily, in terms of love, in terms of friendship. He can't imagine what it's like to be Regina. He can't imagine or even conceive of her loneliness and despair, and he feels that he only got to see half of it last night – that there is even more she's kept at bay.

"Wow, you made dinner," he remarks, stuffing his hands in his pockets and feeling rather underdressed in his jeans and button-up, "What's on the menu?"

"Well, seeing as you didn't give me much to work with…" Regina's voice trails off and she lifts the lid off the pot on the dining room table, revealing the lightly seasoned macaroni and cheese. "This will have to do."

James rubs his hands together and grins, and for a moment Regina sees Henry in him – those same, wide, hungry eyes that stare at a plate of sub-par noodles smothered in fattening cheese sauce as if it's a dish of gold. "Great! I love mac 'n' cheese!"

She responds to that with a flat smile and seats herself.

It's quiet for too long. Awkward clinks of fork against plate chime through the room and neither of them are eating, they're just poking at their food like road kill and avoiding each other's eyes like the plague.

Regina buckles first.

"So, are you going to narrate your life over dinner, or shall we save that for the bedroom?"

She's angry. She feels cornered. She doesn't know why.

James's fork hovers over his mouth and he stares her, mouth agape. "Uh, Regina, I don't want you to get the wrong idea, I just – "

"The wrong idea," she echoes, numbly. "What is the 'right' idea, then, Charming?"

Here it is. He braces himself for impact.

But when he braces himself for impact, he didn't think it would be of a _physical_ kind.

In seconds James is suspended in the air by a thick purple rope of glittery smoke, immobilized and helpless as Regina, below, stares at him with a look that can only be classified as frenzied and demonic.

"I think you get a sick thrill out of it, don't you?" It isn't a question. It's an accusation. She twists her fingers and James is struggling to breathe. "You and your little hero complex. It's precious, really, but as you can see, I am no damsel in distress."

There's a smile on her face that isn't quite hers and though his vision is spotted with black he can still see it, and it frightens him.

"But you _were_ a damsel in distress, once – " he manages to choke out, " – and no one came to save you. Snow told me, she – she told me everything, Regina – "

"_You will not say her name in this house_!"

James is drowning. He can't feel his limbs and he is floating, floating off somewhere, dragged by his middle. Pain shoots through him threateningly like a lightning cloud about to strike and all he can see is Regina's face, Regina's hardened face, and he thinks to himself, "She's actually going to kill me," because he can see that primal urge in her, buried dimly behind her eyes. "Regina, please – _I'm sorry_ – just listen to me for one minute!" His plea comes out like a wheeze and he curses his lungs for it, dampened and strangled though they are.

He doesn't have any further opportunity to beg for his life because within seconds his body hits the ground hard and he is gasping for breath, greedily filling his lungs with air before she can suck it back out of him.

When he gathers enough energy to stand and look about, she is backed against the wall with eyes wide open and face as grey as stone. She isn't breathing; or if she is, it is with a different set of lungs that are not her own.

Though James is the one who very nearly lost his life, _she_ is the one with terror paralyzing her face.

"Regina," he ventures, timidly, afraid to get any closer than he already is. "I – don't understand."

Her voice, when she finds it, is a whimper.

"_You_ did this to me." He can hardly hear her. "_You_ made me use my magic. I couldn't use it before just now, so _you_ had to have done something. I couldn't even," she breaks, fumbles for the right words, "I couldn't even control it. That's never happened to me before."

James has no idea how magic works so he remains rooted to the spot, clueless and stunned and utterly unhelpful. "I didn't do anything," he defends, words slow and harshly articulated. "You tried to kill me!"

She shakes her head. "I got angry, and it just _happened_. I've been trying to use magic for weeks with no result and then you waltz in here and my magic uses _me_."

He doesn't know what to say so he doesn't say anything. He lets her try to work it out for herself.

"I don't understand." She's talking under her breath now; he has to strain to hear her. "Strong magic requires strong emotion." Her gaze is on James now, filled with confusion and repulsion. "I feel nothing for you, _nothing_. You lock me up in my house, you take away my son, you intrude upon my privacy, you treat me like an invalid, and what's worse is you think I care about you, you think I care about your history, when all I really want is to set you and that wife of yours on fire until you are nothing but ashes at my feet."

"Well," he says, lifting his brows, "that sounds like strong emotion to me."

He can't help it, even though his insides are squirming.

"Look, Regina, I don't know how this stuff works, but emotion isn't all bad. You're human. You can't block everything out. Hearts don't work that way."

"I don't have a heart."

"No, don't give me that. I know you have a heart. I saw it yesterday."

That unsettles her. "You saw a lot of things yesterday that you shouldn't have seen."

"Yeah, well, I saw them and you can't take them back." He's getting frustrated now, he just wants her to open her eyes, he just wants her to let him in. "Stop being angry at me for being your friend."

_Friend_. The word hits her as heavy as an anvil. No, Regina doesn't have any friends. No, Regina has betrayed all of those. No, she doesn't want any more. She rejects this. She rejects _him_. He is not her friend and he never will be.

"Let me help you."

_Help_. No, she doesn't need any help. She doesn't need anything from anyone; she's lived most of her life on her own and she prefers it that way. She won't let him in. Not ever again. He's acting entitled, like he has the _right_ to pity her, like he has the _right_ to want to fix her. He's Snow White's Prince Charming, not hers.

"I should hate you, but I don't."

He's so close – when did he get so close to her?

"You have enough hate in your life. You're _made_ of hate, Regina."

He's too close.

"But you weren't always like this. Which says to me, you don't always have to _stay_ like this."

He might have had more to say but he swallows his words when Regina's magic flares a second time.

"When will you and your demented wife get it through your thick heads?" she asks, rhetorically, flattening him against the ceiling.

"_I can't be saved_."

She lets him fall and when he looks up, she is gone.

Regina almost doesn't know what to do with herself.

She's standing in front of her bathroom mirror with a pair of scissors in hand, trying to decide if she's capable of restoring her hair to its (now trademark) bob. It's grown too long now, down to her shoulders and constantly in the way, and besides; long hair is for girls and she is not a girl.

Snip.

A lock falls into the sink, which she's lined with paper towels, and she is instantly relieved. Another snip, and another, and another, until the sink is inky black with her discarded curls. She examines her finished work with quiet approval, satisfied on the whole that it has been done evenly. She gathers her hair between the paper towels and dumps it in the trash.

Though it was but a simple change, Regina somehow feels better with herself.

Today is going to be a nothing day, she can feel it already. Ever since the debacle last week Prince Charming hadn't the nerve to show his face on her doorstep. She wonders if he'll just leave her here to die. Regina wouldn't be surprised. He looked pretty shaken up after she almost killed him (which, she continues to remind herself, was _his_ fault), and maybe Snow White finally decided enough peace was enough. In a way, Regina wishes the Charmings would just get it over with already. Living here like this, with no magic, no Henry, no human contact at all – it is hell. If she is to die, then the sooner the better.

Regina makes it down to her study and runs an errant hand through her hair just before seating herself at her desk. It's piled with books, scrolls, documents of every kind; texts she's exhausted searching for a fix to her little problem. And nothing. "Magic is in tune to the energy of the caster," is all it ever says, "and only the strong of heart can control its full power." Yes, well, she supposes suicidal sorceresses don't exactly fit that criteria, but in that event there should at least be _some_ loophole, _some_ way to wield magic with no connection to the heart. And, by God, she _would_ find it, or she would, to assume the old cliché, die trying.

She sighs, raising a finger and pointing at the pen on her desk, hoping a purple stream of mist would pool out of her and push the pen a centimeter forward – a _centimeter_, that's all she's asking. But, as usual, nothing happens. Nothing _fucking_ happens.

"Your hair, um, looks nice."

Within seconds she's on her feet, heart stopped. Why did he let himself in without even – without even so much as giving her the courtesy of announcing his arrival? Her blood simmers quietly beneath her skin because this is nothing but another reminder that this is no longer her home, in fact nothing in this spit of a town is hers anymore. The Charmings reign victorious once again. Once again, they have everything. She has nothing.

"Charming," is her only greeting, rigid and unyielding.

"I just – wanted to swing by, see if you were alright. Got some more groceries." He's so unbelievably discomfited that Regina can hardly resist the urge to thump him. He can do nothing but stare at her, rather nervously, unsure whether or not to expect another outburst.

"Well, I'm alive. Your task is done. So, go."

But he doesn't want to go. She can feel it, and if she's being totally honest with herself she doesn't really want him to go either. There's a pull between him and God, she hates it, but she's vulnerable now and he – no, she isn't going to let herself think that, not even in the privacy of her mind.

"Regina, look," he begins with the usual words, for the umpteenth time, like some kind of sweet-toned chorus he employs only in her presence, "I want to apologize for last week. I don't exactly know what happened, but I'm starting to understand that it may have been partially my fault. So, I'm sorry."

She folds her lip in under her tongue to bite back a snide retort, and he can tell. Which prompts him to speak again.

"I want to be honest with you. You've ruined my life. You've ruined my wife's life. You've ruined my daughter's life. You've done a lot of wretched, unforgivable things. But – somehow, I _do_ forgive you."

She rolls her eyes. "Another martyr complex. Must be a family thing."

"Come on, don't play this game. You're better than that."

"Am I?" she challenges, softly.

"Yes," he assures her, firmly, taking a step closer. "You've been through a lot in your life. You're a strong woman, at your core. Knowing what you've experienced I don't know how you managed to survive. I don't pretend to justify the evilest of your actions, but I'm just saying that I understand where the pain comes from. So let me help you. Stop fighting it. For God's sake, Regina, please."

Somehow he's managed to get only a foot away from her. Somehow she isn't bothered.

All the same she lowers her eyes. "You need to give this up, James. This isn't a fight you can win."

He's breathing heavily now, irritated by her persistent desire to thwart him. She can feel his breath on her face. It smells like beer, and she wonders, briefly, why.

"It isn't for you to decide whether I can save you or not."

"Isn't it? I have control of my life, whether you like it or not. That's something you and yours can never take from me."

"But that's just it – you _aren't_ in control! Look at you, you're a walking corpse! You can't control your magic, you can't control your emotions, you can't control your hate. You let go of the wheel as soon as the curse broke. Your life has not been under your jurisdiction for a month, at the very least, perhaps longer."

He's skating on thin ice, because Regina can feel her veins throbbing with magic and if he continues to incite her rage then she really _won't_ be in control.

"Regina, you are weaker than you have ever been and – "

"Just. _Leave_!" It comes out in a ragged, unbridled shriek, born in part from desperation and in part from recognition of the validity in his words. But he doesn't shirk from her. Rather, he gets only closer, his own brand of frenzy matching, even exceeding, hers.

"You don't get to push me away, you don't get to tell me I can't save you when I _know_ that I can."

"James – " she blurts, backing away from him.

"Look, you showed me who you are this past month and now it's my turn." He pauses. Swallows. "You're hate – you're filled with hate, more toward yourself than anyone else, I've realized that now. But, me? I'm love, I'm filled with love. That's who I am. So, I – I can save you, I can – dammit – "

She's suffocating beneath his lips before she can even blink, her arms pinned beside her against the wall with fingers hinged in a claw-like position; reaching toward him, as if to stop him, without moving. "No – " she whimpers, when her lips are freed from their captor, "Stop – stop!" Her heart is beating so fast it feels like it might pump its way right through her, and she hurts, she hurts everywhere, and she cannot breathe.

But he will not relent. Perhaps he is kissing her more for his own purposes, more to test his own emotion, rather than to please her. But the worst part is that he _is_ pleasing her. Her muscles are frozen rigid but she's melting under his touch, her skin sizzling when it makes contact with his. Her puckered red lips make way for a strangled moan and she wraps her hands into his hair, digging her nails deep into his scalp as if to remind him that she is cowed, but not clawless.

Even so, she sinks to the ground.

James follows until they are puddled on the floor, and Regina thinks to herself, this is fitting – because for all her life the sex act has been a gesture of submission rather than an act of love. She wonders, what is it now? It feels like love as he weaves his hands tenderly through her hair and gently unbuttons the front of her blouse – it feels like love as he presses soft kisses to the base of her neck that travel down to the crevice between her breasts –

But it isn't love. Is it? It's frustration. He wants so badly to be able to make a difference in her life because that's his nature, that's who he is. But he can't. Prince Charming has met his first lost cause and it's killing him. This is a last resort. This has nothing to do with her. This has everything to do with his pride, she realizes, with his _fucking_ pride. That strikes a familiar cord.

When the weight of his body rolls over hers she stiffens beneath him, all sensory functions halted so that she feels nothing but the fading arousal tingling in her numbed extremities. Her eyes widen and so does her mouth, until she's screaming. She doesn't even know _what_ she's screaming, but something's coming out of her mouth that is so primal, so visceral, that it causes James to cry out too. She doesn't stop until he's off her, on the other side of the room.

"Oh, God – " he hisses disbelievingly, voice tinged with contrition and abhorrence. "Regina, I – I'm so sorry, I don't know what – "

But she doesn't hear him. She's lying corpselike on the ground, staring at the ceiling rigidly with breath coming in rickety gasps. It's soundless and stagnant and neither is capable of moving or breathing or talking or thinking.

James is too shaken to stand, so he crawls to her side on all fours and like a frightened animal peers at her face. It's different somehow, though he can't explain it. Her eyes are seeing things far past what his can see; it's like her body is an empty vessel for her mind, a mind that is free to explore (and clearly is) outside the realm of the present. He reaches out and takes her hand. It's cold.

"Regina," he says, though it is more of a question than a call to earth. "I'm sorry." It's a lame apology as ever because, let's face it, James has never been and likely never will be any better than David at making amends, but he offers it anyway because it's all he can say as he stares at her like this, gutted and void and empty. "I didn't mean to hurt you, I didn't – I don't know what made me do that. God, I'm so sorry, Regina. I'm so sorry."

He begins to get desperate. She's not responding. Hell, she's practically catatonic! What is he supposed to do? How is he supposed to get help, if – how is he going to be able to explain the impetus?

Before he knows it he's trembling. He can't think, he can't breathe, he can't – process what'd just transpired between the two of them. "Regina," he calls out brokenly, trying to summon her back to him. "Regina, talk to me. At least look at me. Please."

"No," is all she says, and when she says it, she sounds like a little girl.

But he's still holding her hand.

"What did he do to you?" he asks, after a silence.

And it's then that she turns to him, swivels her head to the side and fixes her eyes on his with such a penetrating gaze that something inside him goes cold.

"He killed me," she whispers, and the curious thing is that she's smiling.

_It had been a long night for the queen and it shows on every plane of her body._

_She'd begged Leopold not to visit her that night because there was to be a ball the next evening and if he was too rough with her she wouldn't be able to dance as she ought. But he was heedless. She doubted he even heard her pleas. His eyes were glassed over with that bleary faraway sadness against which she was _always_ helpless. She knew he was thinking about his wife, about Snow White's mother. Regina had never seen a man more sorrowful. And she wished she could feel sorry for him, because she did at first, and pitying him would soften the complexity their marriage, but – she could not help it. She hated him. _

"_Regina, Regina!"_

_Cue the little demon._

_Regina's standing in the middle of her dressing room, hoisted up by a stool so that her maids can more easily measure her and fit her into her lovely ball gown, and Snow White, having finished her preparations for the evening, naturally resorts to her default occupation. Bothering her stepmother. It's been three years since Regina became queen and nothing has changed._

"_Oh, you look so beautiful!" she coos in that sticky-sweet timbre, clapping her pretty white hands together with annoyingly genuine glee. "You must save a dance for me. _Promise_ you will!"_

"_I will do my best to escape your father's clutches," is Regina's response, stagnant, devoid of any variance in tone. She is being utterly serious. There are no vocal embellishments to suggest otherwise. Yet Snow White trills out a few giggles as if her stepmother was joking, once again mistaking the queen's unobserved misery for some kind of witty sarcasm._

_Erstwhile, the maids have been jerking wildly at Regina's corset laces, which, naturally, she is quite used to – but just then there is such an uncharacteristically violent tug that it almost causes the woman to stumble off the stool. Snow braces herself as Regina's temper flares and she rounds on them. "Is there a problem?" she seethes, righting herself._

"_It seems you have – well – _grown_, milady, since the first fitting," squeaks one of them, terribly shaken. Regina's malice toward the servants is well known and feared throughout the castle and it is quite clear that this maid is painfully aware of it._

_Before Regina's stomach can drop, Snow squeals._

"_We must fetch one of the physicians! What if – "_

"_I am sure I have just been overindulging in sweets lately," Regina snaps, before the eager princess can finish her thought. "Now leave me be, Snow White. I'm sure your father desires your company." _

"_But – "_

"_Leave me for just a moment, please," Regina exclaims, voice trembling with unshed tears, a feigned nonchalant smile cutting through her face. "All of you."_

_When they follow her orders and she is left alone, she peels at the sleeves of her dress and tears herself out of it. She feels like she's choking on it, like its bodice is made of steel rather than fabric; like it is going to suffocate her if she is in it any longer. When she is stripped to her bare skin she turns sideways in front of the mirror and rests a calculating hand on her belly, straightening her shoulders and lengthening her body so as to get a more adequate assessment. _

_She wonders how she didn't notice it before. A little bump, a tiny, almost indiscernible sloping mound that peaks by a fraction just near her navel, an unmistakable swelling of her overwrought womb. It seems like nothing, like merely a shadow of a possibility, but she knows – _she knows_._

_Her eyes are leaking before she can hope to stop them. Panic surges under her ribs and then she's on the ground, naked and vulnerable and totally alone and for the first time in years missing her mother. Her arms are curled around the small roundness and she pulls her knees into herself, not caring that her maids are probably outside with ears pressed against the door waiting to hear her breakdown so they can have the satisfaction of reporting it to their king. No one is on her side. Not here._

_Regina wants it out of her._

_She wants to reach into her stomach and rip the thing from her body. She would gladly claw through her skin right this very moment without a second thought if she were brave enough. But Regina is a coward. Everybody in the kingdom knows that. So instead she lies on the floor and cries and wishes for someone to save her, because she is too empty and too weak to save herself._

_She feels disgusting. She wants to vomit and scream and die all at once. She is the incubator to a monster's spawn. She is a vessel for evil. Something dark and heinous and horrible is growing inside of her, feeding off her, using her like every single person in this forsaken world seems wont to do._

_The easiest way to kill a parasite is to starve it._

_She hates herself for it, later._

Just as she hates herself, now.

Regina Mills never wanted to be a tragedy.

Yet her whole life has been nothing _but_ a tragedy, in which she alternates as the hero and the villain or sometimes both at once.

Perhaps it's true, what they say: that she's evil, irredeemable, wicked. Perhaps it's true that she deserves the worst of punishments, though she believes she's already suffered it with the loss of her son. Perhaps it _is_ finally time to end this dismal story of hers. Perhaps she doesn't need control of its resolution. Perhaps she just needs to wait, and watch, and let it happen.

Not that she has that much of a choice, anyway.

Regina is walking through the streets of Storybrooke like the main attraction of some special promenade, freed from her shallow domain for the first time in a little over a month. She is a prisoner but she holds her head high like the queen she once was, even daring to meet the malicious eyes of the enraged and bloodthirsty villagers. Her arms are idle at her sides, sweeping against her pantsuit with little rustling, whirring noises. That is one of the only sounds to be heard, the friction of her fabric, because this is the moment they have all been waiting for – her trial, her reckoning, her judgment day – and none of them dare shatter the consummation of their victory with jeering, vulgar voices.

Charming walks beside her, face set still as stone ahead of him in order to prevent venturing so much as a peripheral glance at his captive. He hasn't spoken a word to her since that day last week. And she has relished every minute of this silence. Better to ignore things than to feel them. Luckily they share that philosophy.

It appears as though town hall has been renovated into somewhat of a refugee camp, Regina muses with dark delight as they approach it. There stands an immaculately constructed scaffold at the center of the lawn, no doubt a product of Gepetto and his boy (if his boy survived, anyway), and no doubt meant for her. Surely enough, Rumplestiltskin stands atop it, little beady eyes pointed fixedly at her, an executioner waiting for his client.

She learned long ago that there is no such thing as fear.

It is merely a social construct, meant to bind people to one's will – a tool for the mighty, as it were, and one that she wielded expertly in the past. Regina was taught that fear is an illusion, fear is for the common folk, the lower class, the unworthy. And, as she is destined for greatness, there is no room for fear in her heart. But she _has_ known fear, in the gleam of her mother's eyes, the thin lips of her dead husband, the effortless love between Emma and Henry. Indeed, she is ashamed to admit it, but she has known fear better than she has known anything else.

It is not fear that she feels now.

When she mounts the scaffold she feels Rumplestiltskin's eyes on her. But she is calm, collected, indolent. She knows how this trial will end and he does too, but she cannot force herself to care. The masses of people encircling her are trying to get a reaction, succumbing to their urge to call her names and fling insults at her like rotten fruit, but she does not hear them. She does not hear anything.

"Silence!" Rumplestiltskin's voice shatters the cacophony, and he pounds his cane against the wood.

Out of the corner of her eye Regina sees the royal family huddled together, holding their breath. It is _then_ that something excruciating sparks within her, because she sees Henry. She sees that he is looking away.

"I'll try to make this fast, dearies, as I know we've all been _dying_ to have this settled ever since the curse was broken," he drawls, in that infuriatingly smug voice of his. "You see before you Miss Regina Mills, former mayor of Storybrooke, former queen of the land from whence we came, and the sole reason for all your pain and suffering. But you all know this."

Shouts of "burn the bitch" and "kill her already" filter into Regina's ears and inspire the bemused chuckle that curls out of her lips. As if death is a _punishment_ at this point.

"We've kept her in check, locked away in her house for the past month, and to our fortune she has shown no signs of rebellion. But the fact remains that she has done evil, evil things to all of you – to all of _us_. And each of us has the right to have a say in her penance." His voice commands utterly, but it's still murky to her. "The royal family has finally agreed, by popular request, to two options – banishment, or death."

She's swimming, or floating, or drowning, or all three. Regina's out of focus like a blurry camera lens, only sensing indistinct shapes and sounds and pigments. She doesn't even try to fight it, she just lets this soul crushing apathy, this choking passivity, swallow her whole. The air around her thickens and she lets it. Her veins flex in frustration and she lets them. She can't breathe and she doesn't care. Because nothing matters anymore, now that Henry is inertly watching her condemnation. Nothing matters anymore now that she's been reminded in the most painful of ways that he is no longer hers, perhaps has _never_ been hers. And it's not that he hates her, or is angry toward her, or will never forgive her, no –

It's that he doesn't care. The woman who changed his diapers and took him to school and packed his lunches and bought him toys and kissed him goodnight and took him in when he was lost is about to either die or be imprisoned for life and he just stands there, in Emma's arms, and waits.

Unblinkingly.

Uncaringly.

Even Snow White, even Emma Swan, even _Prince Charming_, show more tense rigidity than Henry Mills, the bearer of her surname.

Speaking of Prince Charming, her eyes lock onto James's and suddenly her world crashes back to reality. He has that horrible effect on her. And he's looking at her with pity again, damn him – his eyes are filled with that same blue gloom that was there when he held her, and kissed her, and –

Damn him.

She can't take this anymore. When she feels threatened by her heart she closes her eyes and so she closes them now, because James touches her in a place she thought was long, long dead, and she can't afford to have it brought to life now. Her heart beats a slow, resonant protest, but it is no use. No matter how much it acts up now, it'll still be silenced in a few short moments. She's certain of that. She's glad of that. She deserves that, she's decided. All things considered, Regina _is_ a bad person. She's done bad things to good people, often without significant reason. She's unfairly attempted to sabotage the happiness of perhaps the _only_ person in her life who ever loved her unconditionally. She's irrational, vengeful, malevolent, hypertensive, thoughtless, arrogant, vain – everything an "evil queen" like that of Henry's imagination should be. At least she fulfilled his expectations in that respect.

God, she is _weak_. If only her mother could see her now.

At length, she opens her eyes. She is still a queen even if she is a queen deposed and she will face her judgment _like_ a queen and not like the peasants who judge her. This isn't the time to fall victim to her heart. Falling victim to her heart is what got her on this scaffold to begin with.

Just then there's a rowdy surge in the crowd, and Regina assumes their little democratic show has finally reached a majority. Fine. Good. She's ready to hear her fate.

"Well, your majesty," comes a voice from behind her ear, "I'm going to have to ask you to kneel. _Please_."

She can't bite back the scoff that trips over her tongue as she listens to his directive, just as she can't bite back her bitter retort, "Like hell."

But it's fragile and breakable and he knows it, so he rests his palm on her shoulder and shatters her bravado. "Have it your way," he murmurs.

She is shoved to her knees.

Her arms are fastened tightly at the wrist behind her back. Her muscles whimper with overwork and starvation but she ignores them. Their suffering will be silenced soon, anyway.

Rumplestiltskin steps forth, boot at her eye level, and opens his arms beneficently to the crowd. "We will now put it up to her victims to nominate Miss Mills' executioner."

With her luck, she thinks to herself, she'll receive her reckoning at the hands of a dwarf. Then again, it doesn't really matter, does it? Well. That's what she tells herself, anyway, until she hears James' name being hallooed from the crowd. James. King James. _Charming_. That's right, that's – of course they'd pick him. Of course they'd want their king to rid them of the blight on their kingdom. Of – of course.

The symphony of unrest quiets, then, as Rumplestiltskin asks Charming if he will accept his people's nomination. Regina hazards a circumspect glance at the royal family and bears witness to a sickeningly sweet scene: James and Snow White share a look that only lovers can understand, then she inclines her head, sniffles, tucks Henry's numb visage into her bosom, and turns away. She's fought it for so long but her people want what her people want and her first duty is to them. She's too weary to fight anymore. James looks like he might be sick, and Emma, as usual, is just standing there uselessly, unsure of what to think or feel or say.

The king pulls his sword from the sheath hanging at the belt loop of his blue jeans and steps forward, face as colorless as the achingly cloudy white sky stretched like a blanket over the sun behind him. Regina summons a smirk when she sees how bloodless, how unwilling, he truly is at the prospect of being her executioner, and her smirk only widens when he bends down to the side of her face and breathes, hot against her cheek, "Use your magic. Get out of here."

But she has nowhere to go, and perhaps he realizes that when she doesn't answer.

"Please don't make me do this." He resorts to pleading, as if it will somehow convince her to flee like a coward. "I care about you, Regina. I don't know how or why, but I do." He pauses, licks his quivering lips. "And I know you care about me too."

"Let's just get this over with," she snaps. She can't be hearing this, not now, not ever. If she is to die by his hands she will do it with a quiet heart.

Resignation seeps into the corners of his eyes and he gives a short nod, a short sigh. "So be it. I will try to make it quick." His voice hitches, snaps, cracks, on the last word. Poor little king, she thinks to herself.

Within moments the cool embrace of the blade's edge is on the back of her neck, and she sucks in what very well may be her last breath.

She wants her last thoughts to be of Henry and Daniel. And –

"Stop, stop!"

"Henry, wait – !"

The sword retreats off her neck and Regina spins in the direction of the royal family, where she sees Henry breaking past the barrier of Emma's and Snow White's arms, and – and straight for her.

When he reaches the scaffold, he takes Charming's sword and petulantly throws it to the ground. "This is ridiculous!" he shouts, chastising the crowd. "In this world, we don't _behead_ people! Look at yourselves, cheering for _Prince Charming_ to murder Snow White's stepmother! He's _Prince Charming_, he doesn't kill people – he can't!" Breathless, the boy takes a step nearer to Regina, who is motionless, and utterly stricken. "She did bad things," he concedes, breathily, "I know that. And I know we took a vote. But I don't care about that. It isn't fair. This isn't how fairytales are supposed to end," he shouts, with a clear disillusion. "She's – she's my _mom_."

And that was it. That broke her.

For the first time in a month (no, for longer than that), Henry embraces her. She holds his body tightly against hers and for a minute she vows she will never let go; she swears she's hallucinating or perhaps already dead and she's going to hang on to this mirage as long as she can. Regina doesn't even try to hold back her rasping sobs. She's clinging to her son like she's clinging to her life and he's clinging back with equal intensity. "I'm sorry," she wheezes, "I'm so sorry, Henry."

"It's okay," he tells her. "I understand now."

When the little boy manages to pry himself away from Regina, he takes up Charming's sword once more and points it at the crowd (even though he's struggling because it's much heavier than he thought it would be).

"If you want to hurt my mom, you'll have to get past me first."

When they're alone, Henry produces a small folded sheet of paper from his pocket.

"I think it's better than the last one," he says with a sheepish shrug.

With fingers still trembling, Regina carefully unfolds the offering. It's another one of his sketches, this time more finished. She runs her hand over the ridges of his pencil-markings and her gratitude and pleasure manifests in the glassiness of her eyes.

"I love it," she manages to say, softly. "Thank you."

It didn't come without a price, but it's the closest thing she's ever had to a happy ending.

Regina Mills never wanted to be a tragedy.

And maybe she doesn't have to be.


End file.
